Work Culture, Organizational Performance, and Business Success: Measurement and Management

An organization's work culture and its business success are tightly linked, say the authors of this unique study, yet to understand and manage work culture one must first know how to measure it. The best way to do this is by measuring your employees, but an employee measurement program must be carefully developed and properly implemented. Rollins and Roberts review the major literature,focusing on employee measurement, detail the continuum of corporate cultures, and compile for the first time best practices in employee measurement. They also provide six case studies that give highly detailed accounts of how successful companies have implemented employee measurement programs to examine their work culture and then used the resulting information to improve performance and the bottom line. This book is important reading for corporate executives, specialists, and academics involved in human resource management, change management, organizational behavior and development, organization effectiveness, management theory and techniques, organizational measurement, and employee attitude/opinion measurement.

Chapter 1 introduces the major topics, and provides perspective to the overall discussion. Chapter 2 reviews the evidence for the work culture-performance link, from other authors and HayGroup's research. Chapter 3 summarizes HayGroup's four culture models―functional, process, time-based, and network―and shows why it is important to be aware of the full cultural continuum. The next three chapters present a literature review of employee measurement applications, and in-depth discussion of best practices in employee measurement, followed by six detailed case studies from the authors' own consulting experience. The last chapter concludes with a summary and description of important future trends.

THOMAS ROLLINS is Managing Director, HayGroup Research for Management, Western Region, located in Los Angeles. He specializes in change management, organization effectiveness, business culture analysis, performance management, and employee-customer research. He has consulted with more than 175 clients as a nationally recognized authority on change management and employee research and is widely published.

DARRYL ROBERTS, fomerly a HayGroup consultant, helps organizations improve their performance, particularly through culture measurement and change, organizational redesign, employee-customer research, and competency-based human resources systems. He previously worked in the banking and computer industries, and also was a research associate on two leading management books, Built to Last and The Leadership Challenge.